The present invention generally relates to aircraft armament apparatus and, in a preferred embodiment thereof, more particularly relates to the external mounting of armament apparatus on a helicopter.
The Blackhawk military helicopter has a cabin area positioned behind the cockpit area and having sliding gunner's windows on opposite sides thereof. Using conventional mounting techniques, either 7.62 mm mini-guns or single barrel 7.62 mm machine guns may be mounted on the horizontal sill areas of these gunner's windows on articulated support linkage assemblies that permit the guns to be swung outwardly through the opened windows to use orientations, or inwardly through the opened windows to storage orientations. Various well-known problems, limitations and disadvantages are associated with this conventional helicopter armament mounting technique.
For example, with both the 7.62 mm mini-gun and the single barrel 7.62 mm machine gun, the articulated, sill-mounted support structure for the gun has an undesirable amount of positional "play" therein which, although necessary for gun adjustment and deployment, substantially degrades the firing accuracy of the gun. Additionally, while the single barrel 7.62 mm machine gun has an ammo box mounted directly on the gun, the 7.62 mm mini-gun has an external ammo box that must be positioned in the adjacent cabin area, with the belted ammunition fed from the ammo box, out the gunner's window and to the gun. This, of course, undesirably clutters up the cabin area. Another problem associated with this sill mounting of both the 7.62 mm mini-gun and the 7.62 mm single barrel machine gun is that the gunner's windows cannot be closed with the guns in their ready positions. The inability to close these windows leads to uncomfortably cold cabin temperatures during cold weather missions, and fuel mist potentially entering the cabin area during in-flight refueling.
With either the 7.62 mm mini-gun or the 7.62 mm single barrel machine gun conventionally mounted on a cabin area gunner's window sill, the maximum upward firing angle of the gun relative to horizontal is approximately 1.5 degrees. This is due to the fact that, with the sill-mounted gun pointed forwardly along a side of the helicopter, this is the maximum upward firing elevation angle of the gun that (with a predetermined margin of safety) will position its bullet path safely beneath the helicopter's forwardly drooped rotor blade tip path to preclude bullet impact with the spinning rotor blades. This 1.5 degree maximum upward elevational firing angle of the gun undesirably limits the maximum firing range of the gun when the gun is swung away from its forwardly pointed orientation--for example when it is being fired off to the side of the helicopter or to the rear thereof.
Yet another limitation presented by this conventional helicopter window sill-mounting of machine guns is that larger machine guns, such as .50 caliber machine guns, are difficult to deploy, and, because of their weight, intensify crash load issues.
As can readily be seen from the foregoing, a need exists for an improved technique for operatively mounting armament apparatus, including a machine gun, on a helicopter in a manner eliminating or at least substantially reducing the above-mentioned problems, limitations and disadvantages typically associated with the conventional window sill-mounting of machine guns on a helicopter. It is to this need that the present invention is directed.